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Look into existing federal (GSA/DoD) and state level programs which provide surplus technology to schools. These programs aren't just for getting military-grade hardware to rural police forces, they can actually be used for the benefit of the public as well. For added bonus, create/participate in a student-run club which discovers, writes, and submits grant requests for student/school needs like this.
To get you started:
GSA Eligibility Info: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/cont...
Find your State Agencies for Surplus Properties: http://www.gsa.gov/portal/cont...
DoD Defense Logistics Agency: http://www.dispositionservices...

People with mental issues should be unemployable as police or security officers.
Timothy Loehmann, who shot Tamir Rice, simply joined police force in a different city after he resigned facing termination for "emotional instability".

The other thing that should not be allowed to happen is the militarization of police force.
Neither through pumping surplus military weapons and equipment through billion dollar "reutilization programs", nor through military tactics and training.

It's Special Weapons and Tactics, not POLICE weapons and tactics.
If all your cops act or look like SWAT teams do... That's not policing crime.
That's a country/state/county/city trying to control its citizens through "superior force".

And police will get BOTH military tactics and training AND mentally unstable police officers when it starts dipping into the pool of military veterans, coming home from a decade or so of war.

I don't give it any specifics, that is what conspiracy theories are for. I only provide what we know is happening and has happened. You can find plenty of theories for why they are doing these things, but those are all just theories (Illuminati world control, economic collapse, and luciferian cults are probably the most common).

We don't see the plans that are resulting in things like training guides proclaiming people that believe in the US Constitution are "terrorists", but we know those training guides exist. We know that last year DHS alone purchased 1.6 Billion rounds of ammunition, and that none of this ammo is really "training rounds" like they claimed because it's mostly hollow point and AP rounds. You don't train with either because they are more expensive than standard FMJ and Hollow points ruin your ability to do any scoring with a target. We know that even after the Snowden leaks the Government has ramped up domestic spying, not reduced domestic spying as the populace has been demanding. We know that programs giving MRAPs and other military gear (sniper rifles, assault weapons,grenade launchers, body armor) to local police forces has been going on for at least 5 years and picking up pace. We also know that military exercises over US cities have been increasing in frequency, even though Posse Comitatus should prevent it to begin with (and during the time I served in the US Army it did prevent exercises over civilian populations). To prevent looking like a douchebag and giving you a LMGT link for you, just search for "US Military exercises over cities" and you will find plenty.

We also know that all of the spying and militarized police have been used to stifle dissent. See OWS, IRS targeting, etc.. We also know that we have seen massive increases in trying to take away the 2nd amendment rights for citizens. Fast and Furious was one example, but look at the rhetoric that follows every shooting event in the US. The whack job from California immediately comes to mind, where his dad's first statement was that he blamed politicians that support the 2nd amendment for the attack instead of his mentally ill kid for the shooting.

I will say that what we know is a cause for concern. We all need to demand transparency in Government and start putting new people on ballots instead of accepting what someone chooses for us. This is the only way to break the oligarchy currently controlling US Politics.

Following what Chris Mattern said in his reply to your post, please reference documents such as SECNAV M-5510.30. Chris is indeed correct in his assertion that non-citizens cannot obtain a security clearance, and must instead be scoped under LAAs, which are severely restrictive in nature compared to standard clearance levels. In particular, the effective access level for LAA personnel cannot ever exceed the Secret equivalence, and there are numerous additional restrictions concerning barring of physical custody or guardianship of classified materials (among other stipulations).

I happen to know this because I served in the Navy. I did serve with some guys who were foreign nationals (including one Russian submariner), but none of those folks could have clearances.

The TSA are a 9/11 job; but the (domestic) rot really has earlier roots. The FBI has basically been a clusterfuck on rights and liberties since good old J. Edgar Hoover himself(COINTELPRO, etc.), and the 'War on Drugs'(formally declared by Nixon in '71, CDAPCA was a year earlier, DEA in '73, Bush Sr. helped push military and CIA involvement, and create the ONDCP in the '80s, though calling its direction 'the drug czar' was Biden, really turned up the heat), and the "Law Enforcement Support Office" (link uses a DoD signed cert, your browser may complain) that provides good, serious, killin' gear to domestic law enforcement dates to '97.

It's been a shamefully bipartisan exercise, for the most part, unfortunately. With the exception of a few, largely impotent, libertarians, who are kept out of sight except when environmental legislation inconveniences business, or Nacy Pelosi comes for your guns, the right wing (even the allegedly-skeptical-of-big-gummint-and-the-nanny-state aspects of it) has a hard-on that just won't quit for Our Troops and our Boys in Blue, so they can generally be relied upon to support it, and even the bluest of the left wing will wet themselves in terror at the thought of being seen as 'soft on crime', so they are totally useless (and far from all of them even start out with good intentions).

Well, not a lot of different materials any more.

If you look at their latest planning document: https://www.dnsc.dla.mil/Uploads/Materials/FY11%20Operations%20Report%20-%20Signed%2002-23-2012.pdf you will see they are in a "going out of business sale" mode for the most part.

They are selling off all of their stockpiles except for just three materials: chromium, manganese, and tin.

Becoming a guaranteed buyer for a portion of the Mountain Pass production to get it into production and keep it there would see to be strategically desirable. Any rare earth stockpile could be used to prevent Chinese price warfare - either trying to shut down other producers again, or trying to strangle competing industries overseas that use rare earths (like now).

Appealing to the WTC is all very well, but being able to defeat economic warfare in the field is better.

You say this in jest, but the government actually has "strategic stockpiles" of a lot of different materials. See http://www.bis.doc.gov/defenseindustrialbaseprograms/osies/stockpikecommittee.html and https://www.dnsc.dla.mil/

Say farewell forever to even the concept of posse comitatus, limited as it was. Now it is just a Latin phrase you never heard of.

Oh, don't you worry your pretty little head about that. The military won't technically do any law enforcement(though it may prove necessary to engage in certain 'domestic Force Protection' activities in order to safeguard DoD assets and personel...), they'll just fire-sale off military hardware under the Law Enforcement Support Office(unless you trust DoD certs, you'll probably get an SSL warning here) program to various police SWAT teams who will then use it for them.

See, absolutely nothing to worry about. Yes, the police may be logistically indistinguishable from your average upper-developing-world mechanized infantry; but the org chart says they aren't military, so it's all good.

No source approved for Microsemi (Actel) qualified chips in China. If you use non-approved sources then, well, shit happens (although how this HW backdoor would be exploited is kind of unclear).

It seems that People's Republic of China has been misidentified with Taiwan (Republic of China).

Afghanistan seems like kind of a low bar for the "elevators to combat robots" metric, since it has been a mixture of tribal infighting and superpower proxy wars at least since the British showed up(and had a lousy time... and then the Russians showed up, and had a lousy time... and the Americans showed up...); but it is, nevertheless, something of a dramatic shift.

What I'm not looking forward to is what will happen when(if ever) the demand for military combat robots slackens a bit and the producers thereof start seriously targeting the home market. Through a combination of military contractors trying to avoid being vulnerable to having only a single customer and direct transfers of military hardware from the DoD(you may throw an SSL warning if your browser doesn't trust DoD certs) military hardware generally has a way of coming home. Even random sheriffs are burnishing their toys collection(it's a wayback machine link because, for reasons that are completely inexplicable, the broader response to the 'The Peacemaker' was perhaps less favorable than anticipated...) I know, from observing one of their training exercises, that the supply of m16s maintained by the police force in the unbelievably boring and low crime bedroom community where I work is much higher than I would have expected.

This suggests that it is only a matter of time before we can expect to see surplussed predators and such 'protecting and serving' here at home.

The entity actually doing the flogging will be theDefense Reutilization & Marketing Service. They've been handing out the goodies to law enforcement types for years(particularly ones who know the magic words: "drugs" or "terrorism"). They only deal with surplus, so the inventory is kind of a luck-of-the-draw thing; but on a good day even podunk PD can walk away with APCs, choppers, assault rifles...

Concrete is not, and never was, on the list of "strategic minerals". Which part of "strategic" do you not understand? Maybe this will help: https://www.dnsc.dla.mil/default.asp Browse around, and note those materials considered to be "strategic" in nature. Note those materials that are NOT listed anywhere - like water, gravel, clay, silica, sand, cellulose - I could go on and on.

I could make this easy for you, but I don't think your attitude merits the effort on my part.

Most contractors merely charge the govt $150 - 250 an hour for the same people the govt uses already, while at the same time, carrying little risk. Compare this to a GS-14 at less than a $100 an hour, inclusive of all costs.

You'll see a move to contract types* ** like cost plus, or cost plus fixed fee, where the government pays out the nose for cost overruns on the part of contractors. Fixed price contracts will only be made with massively inflated rates in order to protect contracting firms from risk.

This leads to massive poaching of govt personnel to the private sector, and vastly inflated rates to the govt.

The privatization of the US government is an abject failure. A-76*** is an abomination, because it does not consider the long term efficiency by private vs public sector.

* http://www.dtc.dla.mil/dsbusiness/Info/contracts1.htm
** http://www.dau.mil/pubs/misc/toolkit.asp
*** http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/Circulars_a076_a76_incl_tech_correction/

Are to overwrite the harddrive 9 times, then degauss (which makes a loud POP and the magnetic information is GONE, and THEN to drill 6 holes through the drive. The DoD policy memo can be found here http://www.drms.dla.mil/turn-in/usable/cpu-memo-jun01.pdf

https://www.drms.dla.mil/sales/

You might be able to get one last gasp by putting the drive in a freezer, but that's it.

I've pulled off a few magic tricks with dry ice, but you have to watch out for condensation. A block of dry ice on the top and bottom of the drive and leave it in the freezer until it is really cold. Hook it up, keep it wrapped in a towel and HURRY!

As to the DoD, here is what they want done with unclassified hard drives http://www.drms.dla.mil/turn-in/asdhddispmemo060401.pdf

I have actually worked on disposing old IT equipment in the military, so I can tell you for a fact that this speculation is wrong.

All computers and IT equipment (down to mice and thumb drives) are tracked on a company's property book. When the item comes up for life cycle replacement, it is wiped and turned into the Property Book Office. Everything that was ever on a property book has to be turned in this way, regardless of depreciation. A commander can write off a certain amount, but since it is always a challenge to stay under the limit, they in practice never throw stuff in a closet to be taken home by some IT dude.

Anyways, after the equipment gets turned in, it goes to the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service. While this stuff sometimes shows up in auctions later on, realistically anything that can still be used gets sent to an ally (usually Iraq or Afghanistan these days) as military/civil service aid.

Military contractors, on the other hand, are a whole different ball of wax. You want to see some waste, allow me to introduce you to Honeywell.

If you're going that deep, you'll want to take at least 3 iPhones with you.

If you were a tech diver, you'd either find this hilarious or you'd nod your head thinking, "Yes, at least 3, or two iPhones and one of a different brand."

The question is, of course, what they mean by waterproof.

Do they mean it's IP68 rated, submersible at depth for long periods of time, or is is merely IP65, splashable and washable?

Is it just "water resistant"? Have they sent the products out to be tested? Is this just snake oil?

Some of us take "waterproof" very seriously, and want to know exactly what it means.

Interestingly enough, the two specs that they list, MIL-PRF-38534 and MIL-PRF-38535, don't appear to have a damned thing to do with waterproofing. They're about component reliability, and there are several grades under each category.

If you're going that deep, you'll want to take at least 3 iPhones with you.

If you were a tech diver, you'd either find this hilarious or you'd nod your head thinking, "Yes, at least 3, or two iPhones and one of a different brand."

The question is, of course, what they mean by waterproof.

Do they mean it's IP68 rated, submersible at depth for long periods of time, or is is merely IP65, splashable and washable?

Is it just "water resistant"? Have they sent the products out to be tested? Is this just snake oil?

Some of us take "waterproof" very seriously, and want to know exactly what it means.

Interestingly enough, the two specs that they list, MIL-PRF-38534 and MIL-PRF-38535, don't appear to have a damned thing to do with waterproofing. They're about component reliability, and there are several grades under each category.

Huh? What does military headgear have to do with anything?

Update:

Found a better link:
http://www.desc.dla.mil/DCM/DCMPage.asp?LinkID=DESCCutomerService

FY '08 price seems to be $3.45/gal

/P

Where can I get some dummy/discarded panels? I want to replace all the walls in my room with them, and wire up some LED's to blink randomly/illuminate when I press the buttons.

Well...a couple places I'd look for starters would be Fair Radio Sales:

http://www.fairradio.com/

They carry a wide range of varied military and commercial electronics.

Also might try Uncle Sams' own surplus sales through the DRMS (Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service):

http://www.drms.dla.mil/

Or, hey...you could actually get something that actually works plus looks cool as heck. How about an IMSAI computer ala 1975? Here's an updated but still vintage-appearing IMSAI (Series 2)..plus, who wouldn't want the computer that had a brief spot in the movie "Wargames"? (Check the pic at the bottom.) How geek-cool is that???

http://www.retrothing.com/2005/08/the_imsai_serie. html

Hey, wait!!! There's the answer right there!! All they need is to buy a few of these puppies, and problem solved!! :P

Cheers!

Strat

Search for hammer or toilet seats at http://assist.daps.dla.mil/quicksearch/
Read the story at http://gutrumbles.com/archives2/001873.php

And the hammer in question was a Modal Impact Hammer costing $1,000 originally.
Have you bid on government, especially military contracts?

The military *did* pay $600 for a device that had a handle on one end and a striking surface on the other, but that was a 'hammer' in the same way that a mainframe computer is an 'adding machine'.

The specs for an Ashtray are similar to specs for an F-22 Raptor (the spec book outweighs the ashtray) because the military is so exact in its specs.
To make them, contractors often have to specially have special plates/machines which can't be used for anything else often.

Yes i agree that there are wastages and contractors earn a lot. But it is limited to KBR, Halliburton variety, the majority of other contractors are mom-and-pop variety with sales less than $2.5 mil annually and actually struggle.

It's too bad the project is axed; the soldiers would have looked pretty hot in that spandex...

FCC Part 15 Class B covers:
-residential use
-digital devices (computing devices/"unintentional radiators")
 
A wireless door opener is designed for wireless transmission, and is not a computer, therefore it does not enjoy Class B protections.

Yeah, because American Soldiers always carry their US Passports with them on patrol in Iraq. I'm fairly certain it'd take one, and only one, RFID-based IED to go off before all soldiers were told to stop carrying whatever RFID item was triggering the bomb.

You basically need to call around the larger companies in your area and inquire with the Supply Department (or equiv.). I live in the Seattle, WA area and go to the Boeing Surplus Store religously.

The Governement also auctions off stuff at http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/gsaauctions/. The GSA isn't to good for IT type stuff though.

Defense Department gets rid of stuff at DRMO http://drms.dla.mil/.

Here's a project for ya:

- Go to eBay and buy one. (wait for the DRMO auction for the 7-track unit)
- Build a box to acess the drive - not real hard for a good hardware hacker
- build a Linux driver to access it (presuming no driver exists already for the card you connect it to)
- get the tapes via FOIA

Conclusion: get the data for next to nothing.

Oh, yeah, one last step:

- ship the 245,000 smackers you didn't use to my house, in .9999 gold coins please.

The military takes the security of nuclear weapons extremely seriously, that whole "Deadly Force Authorized" thing. They have a very strict two man (person) rule, it doesn't matter if you are the CO of the carrier, squadron or GW himself, no one will not be allowed access to the weapon alone, period! Even if you have the clearence and the required second person you will not be with the weapon unless you have an authorized purpose and it fits with the current status. No "we're just here to move things for the exercise" or "we're just gonna get an early start on some maintenance" no movement or maintenance scheduled, start kissing deck or you will get shot. Besides I think that carriers unload even the conventional stuff before going in for maintenance, makes things a bit safer and in '91 Bush Sr. removed all tactical nukes from surface ships http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/papers/1991/9 1092704.html ~18th paragraph down or just Google tactical nuclear weapon surface ship but don't ask http://neds.daps.dla.mil/Directives/5721e1.pdf cause they won't tell.

Not auto salvage yards, but places like the Governments DRMS (Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service) and other places where over orders or non-completion resulted in "I" beams, sheet metals, hydraulic pumps and motors, controllers, stuff I bought that I don't know what it does but looks cool, heavy, and expensive; and lots of other cool stuff, much of it never used and well cared for, could be found, sometimes for $60/ton! (A consideration on a 45 ton mobile machine). Seems it is cheaper for them to sell it than to store it or ship it out of Alaska. I built the drive from sprockets, chains, and drives of a cement mixer truck, and the primary scrubber is an extra piece of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, so it's got a little bit of history to it. Best part of all is that it requires maintenance or attendance only once per day, and cost less than $100,000 to build. The performance, after a little tweaking in the field, exceeded my expectations. My next target is to make it so it digs and feeds itself. Now accepting resumes and letters of interest.

-cp-

Since you asked: try this (page 8) from the defense logistics agency (who aren't a pest company).

Just because you love it, it doesn't suddenly stop being a rodent (or incontinent). If you don't believe me, get out the blacklight (as per the above PDF).

We're limited by Congress - when old computers are recycled we have to follow pretty much the following procedure -

• Redistribute them within DoD.
• Transfer them to law enforcement agencies.
• Donate them to schools.
• Offer them for sale to the public.
• Sell them as scrap.

You can check out our public website here. You should be able to find something for sale near you ;-)

No. You'd better to refer to MilSpec MIL-J-26149 if you want to do things right.

I'm a professional soldier, so here's what I have to say.

If I'm called on to go to visit my colleagues who are already in Iraq, I'll be carrying over 130 lbs of protective gear, weapons, ammo, rucksack and equipment, and the bulk of it goes on my back. A plane and a parachute gets me to my DZ and I walk from there.

Military equipment is bulky and heavy. Take the PLGR (Precision Lightweight GPS Receiver). The last picture shows it's size. This puppy weighs 2.75 pounds and is huge. Compare to any Garmin, Magellan, Lowrance and others whose products weigh less than a pound and are a quarter of the size. (Blah, blah, Selective Availability. Another discussion.)

Another example: The Mortar Ballistic Computer weighs 7 lbs and makes my Gameboy Advance (cheap entertainment in the field) look like a Cray Supercomputer. Oh, and it's roughly 20x larger than the GBA.

So if I had the room in my ruck for a laptop (I don't), and I could justify spending $4500 on it - four months' pay (I took a slight paycut when I quit my sysadmin job in Silicon Valley for the opportunity to get gassed in Iraq), you could bet I'd be buying one of these and not FOUR pieces of crap that are going to break when I hit the DZ.

Cheers! :)

Check out http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/ for information on US Dept of Defense surplus sales.

I'm really glad that they have FSC 8810 - I always wanted to buy an army surplus cow!!! ;-)

Seriously, though, it is a really good site. I just wish I could save enough pennies to buy something in the FSC 1810 catagory.

The applicable US DoD standard is MIL-STD-1310G - "Shipboard Bonding, Grounding, and Other Techniques for Electromagnetic Compatibility and Safety". I'm not sure if that document specifically addresses Ethernet, but one of the illustrations should describe how to ground some differential twisted-pair data network. You can get MIL-STD documents from DAPS.

Here's the Newsweek article mentioned in the Reuters story. I think the shipper who was supposed to take the stuff from Dover to Warner Robins is at fault.

The Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service holds public auctions, but they exclude items with demil code "D".

Here's the Newsweek article mentioned in the Reuters story. I think the shipper who was supposed to take the stuff from Dover to Warner Robins is at fault.

The Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service holds public auctions, but they exclude items with demil code "D".

The "Humanitarian Daily Ration" is vegan. "The components are designed to provide a full day's sustenance to a moderately malnourished individual. In order to provide the widest possible acceptance from the variety of potential consumers with diverse religious and dietary restrictions from around the world, the HDR contains no animal products or animal by-products, except that minimal amounts of dairy products are permitted."

The contents of one MRE meal bag provides an average of 1300 kilocalories (13 % protein, 36 % fat, and 51 % carbohydrates). It also provides 1/3 of the Military Recommended Daily Allowance of vitamins and minerals determined essential by the Surgeon General of the United States.

...is that there's actually a vegetarian MRE.

You don't win wars with sal-ad! You don't win wars with sal-ad! You don't win wars with sal-ad! :-)

~Philly

There is no macaroni-and-cheese or egg products in MREs," said Juming Tang, a professor of biological systems engineering at the university.

MREs

They look nice. I'll have a #3 please.

Check the local Military bases DRMO (ok, guess it's now DRMS - Defense Reutilization & Marketing Service)

Or check their website: http://www.drms.dla.mil/newsales/

Used to be a huge selection at Ft. George G. Meade (north side of DC) with everything from old 8088 Grid laptops to 27in' RGB monitors....

Good Luck!

I fail to see what you have against the Defense Contract Management Agency. Dirty bastards, managing defense contracts!


oh wait, you're talking about the DMCA. It always seems to me that people mix up acronyms when talking about organizations and law. People seemed to have a grudge against the IBM AS/400 community for going on a rampage against emulation and ROM sites when it was actually The Interactive Digital Software Association that was terrorizing the emulation community.

I don't mean to be grammar police, but please get your acronyms straight.